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The officer who has led and stabilized once-troubled Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations for the past two years will be moving on this summer.

Col. John Devillier will assume command of the 88th Air Base Wing and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, on July 17 - one week after he's relieved at AFMAO by Col. Daniel Merry, according to Christin Michaud, a command spokeswoman. Merry currently commands the 100th Mission Support Group at RAF Mildenhall, United Kingdom.

Devillier moves from one of the smallest yet most sensitive commands in the Air Force to a base that is the largest single-site employer in the state of Ohio, as the Wright-Patterson Public Affairs Office describes it.

At AFMAO, Devillier commands a staff of 54 civilian and military workers and 44 service members, drawn largely from Dover's 512th Airlift Wing. They serve as, essentially, the military's funeral home. AFMAO has received every casualty from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is what Devillier, in a 2013 interview, called a "no-mistake environment."

Wright-Patterson will be a completely different environment. The wing has more than 5,000 Air Force military, civilian and contract employees and provides support to a major acquisition center, research and development laboratories, a major command headquarters, an airlift wing and what is described as the "world's largest military air museum." All told, the base has more than 27,000 employees.

Devillier took command of AFMAO in May 2012, just five months after the U.S. Office of Special Counsel determined that mortuary officials had retaliated against four civilian whistleblowers who reported official misconduct, including the mishandling of servicemembers' body parts, by trying to fire two of the civilians and suspending two others.

That's all been repaired, Devillier said last summer. "I can tell America that the men and women who work at the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs take great pride in what we do here, in providing dignity, honor and respect for our nation's fallen," Devillier said. "They've earned it."

Military/Southern New Castle County reporter:
Bill McMichael has twin beats: the military, and Southern New Castle County. He reports on Dover Air Force Base and the state Army and Air National Guard, as well as on issues faced by the state's veterans. He added the south county to his coverage responsibilities in November 2014, with an initial focus on residential and retail development in Middletown, Odessa and Townsend.